Tag Archives: Eric Holder

President Barack Obama listens as Vice President Joe Biden (left) presents the report on the Roadmap to Recovery as he meets with his Cabinet in the State Dining Room of the White House, Monday, June 8, 2009. Looking on at right are Attorney General Eric Holder and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The President of the United has invoked Executive Privilege to prevent release of documents regarding the Fast and Furious scandal. Executive Privilege is generally used to protect documents and records involved directly in the programs and issues of the President, not the Attorney General or the Justice Department. It’s Executive Privilege, not AG Privilege. Which then begs the question:

Why?

After all, it’s been Attorney General Eric Holder, presiding over what has arguably become the most partisan and unjust Justice Department we’ve seen in a long time, who is in the hot seat with Congress breathing down his neck over the gun-running Fast and Furious program which ended up killing at least one Border Patrol and likely countless Mexican civilians, all in the name of giving the gun lobby a bad name, which attempt blew up in the anti-gun Justice Department’s face, and purportedly to track criminal and drug running gangs in Mexico, which attempt also blew up in American Law Enforcement’s face. They’re 0 for 2 so far. So if Eric Holder is the one Congress is after, trying to get him to tell them who knew what and when they knew it, why is President Obama wading into this, getting close to the political and judicial mud pile, and putting his name and that of his Presidency on the line by invoking Executive Privilege to prevent the turning over of documents by the Justice Department to Congressional investigators regarding this program?

There are a few reasons I can think of, but there’s no telling which of them, if any, are more accurate.

The obvious one that’ll spring to most people’s minds is that proof of knowledge of the program extends beyond Eric Holder, and that President Obama himself, probably hoping to score another Law and Order PR coup, knew about and possibly even explicitly authorized the Fast and Furious program and is now afraid that he’d burn along with Holder should the documents come out?

A less obvious but still possible reason is that Valerie Jarret, who has long been suspected of being Attorney General Eric Holder’s biggest fan and supporter in the White House, has cajoled/demanded/begged/manipulated the President into invoking Executive Privilege simply to protect her most favorite man in D.C., tying the President to the sinking ship of Fast and Furious to protect Mr. Holder. Is Ms. Jarret willing to sacrifice the Presidency to protect the Attorney General?

I have no facts or basis for any of these theories, they are entirely my own wild speculation.

Network Neutrality is one response to fears that infrastructure and service companies, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, spell doom for the freedom of the internet as they inevitably begin controlling access to content, enhancing access to content they own, control, or partner with, and limiting access to content they deem contrary to their best interest.

The majority of Network Neutrality supporters want the FCC to step in and set rules requiring the infrastructure/service companies provide equal access to all content and forbidding them from interfering in any way with the freedom of the internet.

Sounds good, right?

As with any other debate, you have to get to the deeper issues. And this debate is rife with deeper issues.

When I first heard of Network Neutrality I was gung-ho for it. I did not understand the goals at the heart of this push.

“Don’t be hasty, master Hobbit!”

There was a reason liberal Democrat leaders were more for this program than Republicans and conservatives. Liberals dream of more regulation and control and private and free systems. The freer the system the stronger the urge to a liberal to regulate it.

My confusion over Network Neutrality did not continue long. I supported it in March of 2007, and by August of that year I wrote about the inherent conflict between government regulation and innovation.

In the arguments over Net Neutrality, I feel for the plebes. I don’t want my traffic throttled any more than it already is by the ISP. But is it the government’s responsibility to control this? And if we allow the government to say who can access the internet and at what speed, where is our moral authority when the government wants to say who can’t access the internet?

If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that it’s pretty presumptuous to predict what the future will be. We should be very, very cautious about imposing regulations based on what we think competitors will do in the future and how we think consumers will respond based on what we think competitors will do.

Gee, that sounds familiar.

Oh, yea. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a 60 minutes spot on healthcare and specifically Medicare and Medicaid’s extremely high levels of fraud made perhaps the most blind statement regarding human nature I’ve ever heard from a lawman:

People didn’t think that something as well-intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract um… fraudsters.

People not thinking. Not considering the implications of what they want.

Just because it’s well intentioned doesn’t mean it’s right and good and free of the failings that so plague us mortals.

Are Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast completely good in their actions so far regarding the internet? No.

Comcast has been slapped once for purposely throttling connections to certain types of content during peak times load times.

But is the government the solution?

In my article regarding regulation versus innovation I make it clear that while there is a place for regulation, that regulation is best applied to the government itself, limiting it’s ability to tamper with our system of free enterprise.

There is a question I’d ask of anybody regarding this issue. If Thomas Edison were alive today which entity would be the greatest enemy of his innovation: Government or Business?

ICANN is currently the organization closest to being “in control” of the internet.

It’s a private organization which controls the distribution and changes to the domain names which make the internet navigable.

(A)sking the FCC to “protect” the Internet means inviting government oversight, which injects more politics — not less — into the operation of the Net.

Sonia then talks about someone I’ve met:

Ashwin Navin, cofounder of BitTorrent, also says he doesn’t support government regulation of the Net, even though his name appears on an OIC letter. He says he’d rather see Internet service providers come up with a self-regulatory plan based on a pledge to keep the Net open and the creation of a third body to arbitrate. Indeed, Navin says that his own company’s scuffle with Comcast was ultimately solved without formal rules after a netizen noticed that Comcast was degrading service and brought the matter to the public’s attention.

“The problem is disclosure,” Navin says. “Consumers need to know if the ISP, which is the most invisible layer in the stack, is responsible for an improved or degraded experience for any of the services they use.”

Geek Out Alert!

In my days working for Fry’s Electronics, Ashwin’s step-dad hired us to build and repair his wireless network. He introduced me to Horchata and I watched the Blue Angels practice over his backyard. Ashwin and his brother came by once while I was there and I basked in the presence of those gods of the internet, the business minds behind BitTorrent.

But Ashwin has a point. A good point. A point I may elaborate on further in the future.

Suffice to say that information is the grease for the wheels of the free market and capitalism. And the internet, above all else in the history of markets, has enabled the dissemination of information more efficiently and the finding and gauging of information more easily.

Why do we trust the government to act in our best interest when it comes to such a powerful information force as the internet? The government has no competitors to blow the whistle on it’s misdeeds. The government self-interest lies in a dearth of information.

Trust the government and be taken for a fool. I’ll not be joining you in your foolishness.